


The Other Someone

by TheColorBlue



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Meditation, Multiplicity/Plurality, a weird story that meanders, i don't really know anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:51:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has seen the propaganda films: about Iron Man. About Captain America. About the Hulk. The films about the Hulk are sensationalist, and he knows that they are sending him a message: come home. </p><p>AU from film continuity canon, and experimenting with characterization.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bruce had seen the SHIELD and military propaganda films. There were the movies about Iron Man, sleek and polished bright as any Stark tech released for public consumption. There were the patriotic films about Captain America, and he’d read the news pieces that described how the accounts had been purposefully fictionalized to protect both military confidential information, as well as to protect the private life of the real Captain America as civilian; the real Captain American was quite alive of course, by some miracle of science or discovery never revealed to the public. 

Bruce had also seen the propaganda films about _him_ , and those films—Bruce had never been quite sure about. The films about the Hulk were fictionalized-sensationalized, and he often wondered if they were stories designed to bring him home. Come home, Bruce Banner. Turn yourself in. Look at these films we’ve done about you, giving this picture of you to the public—how sympathetically we’ve drawn you and how we try to understand you! Obviously you are a monster, but of course you are a tormented one, one in need of help; come home—

There was something that one of the actors portraying him said, something about… _I am angry all the time_. 

Bruce turned these thoughts over in his head, and it made him feel rather ill. No they didn’t understand him at all, it was apparent from their sensationalist films, but he thought he was beginning to understand _them_. Bruce Banner was valuable, as a scientist and expert on gamma radiation. Hulk was also valuable. Bruce would not go home. 

\---

A year ago, he had spent time alone in the rainforests of South America. He had fled from government agents in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro. He was alone, and grieving, and he had begun to build a make-shift place for a clinic for the under-served locals, but he had yet to make himself known, yet to reach out and begin treating patients. He was alone, and for a week he meditated, and he meditated, and he meditated, and outside the rain poured down. 

One morning, he walked outside—he was running out of food, there was a village half an hour away by foot—and there was mud seeping into his sandals, and he was getting very wet. If he’d thought about, he probably would have been sure that he looked like a drowned rat, hair growing out too long and face unshaven. 

He was not thinking about the face he would see in the mirror. He was not thinking about anything at all, he had not spoken to another soul in a week, but there was a quiet feeling inside of him. He felt scrubbed-out and raw. He looked at the rain dripping from the trees, focusing on it in an abstract way, and there was a sudden feeling—

It was like clarity. It was like the world had become all at once saturated and sharp, diamond-faceted. He wouldn’t have known how to describe it. There was just a feeling like he didn’t need to think about anything, something utterly beautiful inside his chest—

And then he thought of the Hulk, and it occurred to him, in that strange and peaceful way, that this was and it wasn’t like how the Hulk saw the world each time he emerged. The Hulk emerged because of rage, but also the Hulk was a super-being. His senses were enhanced. Everything around him was so much sharper, vibrant, close, and loud. Usually, there were also military missiles and guns being shot at him, that probably hadn’t helped any, and Bruce felt something sad and mourning move into his mouth. 

He had a memory of when the Hulk had fled into the desert, once. The Hulk had taken refuge by some enormous rock formations, by an oasis with water and a flower growing. They had been alone, and the flower had been so beautiful. 

Bruce turned around, sandals sticking to the muddy path, and he went back inside his make-shift home in the rainforest. He sat down, still dripping from the rain, and he closed his eyes. He concentrated on his breathing, and then he focused on the silence inside his mind. He had never spoken directly to the Hulk. He needed to learn how to speak to the Hulk.

Bruce did not know how long he sat for. There was the sensation of his breath. There was the beat of his heart. There was the silence inside his mind, and he was reaching out, like everything inside of him was going as clear and expansive as a winter-night sky. 

It may have been hours later, when he finally sensed something moving, out there, inside of him. He didn’t know. He called a wordless _hello_ , and there was someone out there, the kind of someone who bared his teeth and smashed stone with his fists and could leap so high it was as though he was flying. 

This other someone did not say hello in so many words, but Bruce could feel the wary greeting. 

_Hello_ Bruce says, and the other someone did not back down nor bare his teeth. 

_Hello, old friend._


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce was living in a cabin out in the Canadian wilderness when Steve Rogers found him. Captain America was dressed in civilian clothes and had come riding up on a motorbike. He’d knocked on the door, and then abruptly turned around to face the green giant crouched behind him. Hulk’s teeth were slightly bared. They’d heard the bike coming up the dirt road, and then climbed out the back window, ready for a possible fight. There shouldn’t have been anyone around for miles and miles, and the likelihood of lost tourists was very, very slim. 

Hulk sniffed the air, and then let out a low growl. The newcomer had a subtly strange scent. Hulk had never smelled anything like it before. 

The stranger raised both hands, palms open, to show that he was unarmed. 

He said, “I’m, uh, looking for Bruce Banner. I guess you’re… him?”

He didn’t move, and neither did Hulk. Hulk snorted and said, “I’m not Banner, I’m Hulk. Now Hulk is telling you to leave. NOW.”

In their head, Bruce was sighing over having to move again, and also mentally calculating the maneuvers that would most efficiently clean up and pack away all their possessions so that Hulk could get them out of there. What botheration. Where there was one military type at the doorstep, a dozen more were soon to follow, regular as clockwork—

“I swear,” the stranger said, “I came on my own, and I don’t mean any harm.” Then he said, “I’m, uh, Captain America. I promise, no one from the military knows I’m here. I just wanted to—I just wanted to talk to Bruce.”

Hulk looked down at the stranger, at the so-claimed Captain America. Then he laughed. Guffawed really. “You don’t look like Captain America,” Hulk said, not bothering to hide the dismissive tone.

Steve Rogers had the grace to look sheepish then. “Um, yeah. I don’t really look like me in the posters, I guess.”

\--

The real Steve Rogers had brown hair, for one thing, and brown eyes. All the old posters painted the picture of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, chiseled figure. Captain America of the posters looked like a movie star. The real Steve Rogers was handsome in a healthful way, but there wasn’t much more to him that that. He looked like a real person. His hair-cut could have brought to mind another time, if you’d thought to make the connection, but otherwise he simply looked like an ordinary guy. 

Bruce finally came out into the body when Steve sat down in the dirt, palms still open and in the air, and making himself look as helpless and nonaggressive as possible. Steve admitted, later, that he hadn’t been _too_ worried about getting mauled by the green giant. 

“I’ve read the files,” he said, both of them in the cabin now, and Bruce trying to decide if this warranted tea, or if he was going to get some very bad karma if he just let Captain America sit there with nothing. “Your files suggested that Hulk doesn’t attack before others attack him first. They say that, after the first couple of conflicts, the Hulk started taking confrontations out of populated areas if he could. He avoided causing unnecessary harm. I was willing to take my chances on that—and besides, with the super serum, I can get out of scraps pretty fast if I need to.”

“You’ve never been in a fight with the Hulk,” Bruce said. He finally got the kettle out and set the water for boiling. He was wearing a ratty bathrobe while puttering around, making tea for Captain America. Truly, his life had gone to the strangest places now. Also, “Hulk tells me that he could smell something, probably the super serum, on you.”

Steve looked at Bruce in confusion. 

Bruce frowned a little, picking through tea packages, before explaining, “Hulk has enhanced senses—maybe something like the effects of Project Rebirth on you? But I really wouldn’t know, the reports on you never specified—but Hulk could definitely get a different kind of scent off you.”

Steve still didn’t look as though Bruce were making much sense to him. Then he said, at last, “I don’t understand why—I mean. That is to say.” He stopped himself, then tried again. “You talk about the Hulk like he’s someone else. Isn’t he you?”

Bruce put tea bags in chipped mugs and waited for the water to come to a full boil. “In the common vernacular, I guess we’re ‘multiple personalities’—but I don’t like the sound of that, to be honest, and Hulk hates it. That’s the closest I can come up with though, but we’re two different people in the same body, and sometimes Hulk turns it green.” Bruce poured out the hot water, and went to join Captain America on the mat on the floor. Bruce’s selection of furniture was very sparse. 

“Why did you come out here, Rogers?” he asked, the words coming out blunt, if not accusing, like a warning for consequences if the answer did not satisfy. 

Steve shrugged, and looked away as he nursed his mug. 

“I heard that there was someone else they’d made, or tried to make, into a super soldier,” he said. “You know, it’s funny—at the time, when I signed up for everything, I just wanted to do the right thing for my country. But since then, I’ve had the thought—I’m glad that the super serum was lost. I don’t know if that’s terrible of me, or hypocritical, but I’m glad all the same.”

“My lab division tried to do something a little different than you,” Bruce admitted, slowly. “But—you’re right. It was part of the same line of thought. They were trying to revive the super soldier project, but. Well as you can see.” He smiled then, no humor in the expression. “They got us instead.” 

He took a sip from his tea, and then made a face. “Of course on that note: since you’ve shown up, I’m going to have to move house again. Damn you, Rogers, for inconveniencing me.” Then he asked, “How did you find us, anyway?”

Steve scratched his head. “Ah, Tony Stark helped me. He—has a complicated relationship with the military, I guess, because he hacked their files and sent me on my way.”

“Huh,” Bruce said. Well that image certainly set him to thinking of Stark in a somewhat different way. Different from the publicity images anyway, which conveyed an affluent and filthy rich businessman who was, nonetheless, admittedly a bit bland in the personality department. 

“Tony’s a good man,” Steve said. “I trust him.”

Bruce shrugged carelessly. “Well, I don’t know him—or you even, really. So. if you don’t mind, after our little chat, I’m going to have to pack up, all the same, and get on out of here.” 

Steve started, and then said, “I thought—well, after reading about you, and seeing as how we’re—we have things in common, you and I. If you ever need, well, anything—I guess that’s what I’m here to say.”

Bruce looked at Steve. He looked at this man who seemed ordinary, but had the subtle feeling of something extraordinary. Steve sounded like he was being honest in his feelings, but anyone could lie, and Bruce shook his head at last. 

“Kind of you to say it, but I think the Hulk and I are better off on our own, right now,” Bruce said. 

In their mind, Hulk made a noise of discontentment. Bruce was telling a pack of lies, Hulk was sure, because he was tired of running and living with only Bruce, and he knew that Bruce felt the same way. He knew this to be true. 

_We can’t trust anyone,_ Bruce said in reply. _Not yet._

Funny. In all the movies made about them, there was a woman named Betty—someone who could gentle the Hulk, and someone who represented a kind of soft hope for Bruce, but the truth of it was: Betty Ross did not exist. It was all a romantic fiction, and maybe Captain America really was a fiction too. 

Bruce didn’t know. He didn’t have any idea how far this path could possibly take them, but he sat there on the floor with Steve Rogers, sitting still and quiet while Rogers finished his tea, and waiting so that they could all leave, parting in their own ways.


	3. Chapter 3

When Tony saw the films about himself, about the Iron Man, he saw a stylized character. Robert Downey Jr. had his own style, and he’d created a character. Tony Stark in reality was generally more subdued, more grounded in his presence and mannerisms and, anyway, he didn’t care to expend energy on the media, these days. Talk to him at twenty-two, and he would have been into everything, the whole night life, woman hanging off his arms and a dozen shot glasses filled with every kind of liquor lined up in front of him. By twenty-six, he was already burned out with that kind of lifestyle. He was bored. He was sooo bored. Tony Stark was smart, smarter than anyone he could tell you that, and at thirty-eight, he’d worked out his own brand of how to stay sane. 

Of course there were still days he stayed up all night, didn’t shower, crouched over the bench in the workshop running data analysis or delicately wiring and soldering together parts—but also there were a lot of things he didn’t do. He rarely drank, except on social occasions; for reasons even he had trouble parsing out, he’d become nearly a vegetarian; and he presented a mild, cool face to the public and his company board. He saved his passion for the workshop. He knew what he wanted out of life—had figured it out even better after that miserable series of events involving Obadiah Stane and what had resulted in a pacemaker in his chest (it was an ordinary pacemaker, actually; the arc reactor was embedded in the suit, not his chest, which was a bit of a shame; he’d have enjoyed the dramatic effect). 

Anyway, after all of that, his direction in life and for the company had seemed obvious. Well, he had mostly figured it all out. He hadn’t counted on Steve Rogers to come strolling into his life, the man out of his time, the kid from Brooklyn. Domestic affections had thrown a wrench into the tidiness of his life schematics. 

After Canada, Steve Rogers came back to the New York flat on a Friday evening. Tony came back later from a company dinner to find the younger man sitting on the couch, watching the old Looney Tunes cartoons. These ones had been after Steve’s time, and for some reason he loved them. 

Tony slipped onto the couch beside the much larger Steve and said, “I’ve always wanted to use that line. You know: _Anthony Stark, billionaire! I own two mansions and a fleet of yachts._ ” 

On the screen, Elmer Fudd had successfully outwitted Bugs Bunny (one of very, very few times) with a clever ruse that involved a mental institution, manipulation of the system, and a study in hypnosis. 

“It’s so strange about these cartoons,” Steve said. “They feel familiar, more familiar than a lot of things I see around these days—but at the same time they’re not. I guess they would have been made by fellas coming out of the war, or back from the war, people who grew up when I did, and the style’s the same.” 

Tony had long kicked off his shoes, and was now attempting to curl up next to Steve like a too-large and probably very bony cat. He was too old for this kind of nonsense, but Steve let him, and that’s why he loved Steve. 

“How’d the trip to Canada go?” Tony asked, Steve’s arm around him, and comfy-like. 

“I found Banner,” Steve said. 

“I like that he left you in one piece,” Tony observed. “If he had touched a hair on your head, I would have had to fly up to Canada and blow him up myself.”

“I just hate that that could have been me,” Steve admitted. “I hate that in another life, if I’d decided that the military wanted to use me in the wrong way, or couldn’t ethically utilize me at all, I’d have to be on the run. It’s not right. I’m not even sure I like it any better under SHIELD’s jurisdiction.”

“Oh, trust me,” Tony said. “You’re better off under SHIELD right now, even if Nick Fury is a frightening bastard.”

The TV screen had gone to menu selection of cartoon shorts. Tony was partial to the one about the Dover Boys himself—he’d watched far too many cartoons as a kid—but he was glad for the break from visual distraction. He liked cuddling up next to Steve, and Steve paying attention to him.

“I feel too mixed up these days,” Steve said. 

Tony pondered that. “Well,” he said at last. “SHIELD hasn’t given you a lot to do, yet. Trying to let you acclimatize, I suppose.” Then he said, “Nick’s been talking to me about a new project, something coded the Avengers Initiative. You might have something to do with your life yet.” 

“And you?”

Tony said, idly, “Oh, you know me. I always stick my nose into places where it doesn’t belong.” Also his hands, although Steve was making pleased noises at the cuddling. Then Tony stole the remote and selected his choice of the next cartoon. 

The cartoon rolled into a sequence about a big old dog finding a kitten in a construction yard. The story of it was both cute and absurd. Tony liked to think of himself, then, as the kitten, and Steve as the big, burly dog. He chuckled to himself at the very idea, what a big sap he was turning into. He wasn’t fit to be a character in a slick action film, if you really wanted the truth of it. Then again, there were a lot of things that Tony in reality did that wouldn’t have made it into the movies. Things like: he’d guest starred on Sesame Street (kids needed to get interested in sciences and engineering early, you know?) Also, he had no taste for heavy meat dishes, particularly beef, and couldn’t stand getting drunk (it interfered with his engineering projects). Not to mention that fact that he had a boyfriend, of sorts, because although the Pepper Potts of both film and reality were both adorable in their own ways, and also terrifying, Tony had his own life, his own tastes and ways of doing things. 

“I think we should keep an eye out for Banner,” Steve said. “I don’t like the idea of the military catching up with him.”

Tony looked up at Steve. “Interfering with affairs of the state?” he asked, with teasing astonishment. “Or, military as it were. My dear Steve, are you turning into a real-life vigilante?” Then he said, “I for one, approve. I’ll just keep screwing with the military intelligence on Banner via stealth cyber attacks, shall I?” 

Steve made a noise that was somewhere between wry and long-suffering, and Tony lay his head against Steve’s arm, loving him.

He probably was getting too old for this kind of fluff. 

He didn’t give a damn.


End file.
